As many of you may know, the California Assembly passed a bill that would allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on juries in this state. How would this change the face of juries? According to Fox News, there are approximately 190,000 non-citizen, permanent legal residents in California. The largest number of legal residents (50,000) come from Mexico. Other sizeable numbers come from the Philippines and China, approximately 25,000 each. Approximately 15,000 are from India.

The bill is not yet law, but it already has a lot of people talking. Many have voiced their opinions about allowing non-citizens to serve on juries in California. However, there is one group of people we have not heard from about this topic - jurors. We are looking into juror attitudes about non-citizens serving on juries by asking jury-eligible residents of California how they feel about the issue. We plan to release the data right here over the summer. Stay tuned!